Monthly Archives: July 2010

I just had to share this – it’s a message from My Pastor (yes, MY Pastor 😉 from the bulletin this week:

I am often humbled and deeply impressed with the warm reception I receive when visiting people in their homes, even people who do not know me. People show great hospitality and kindness as they welcome us priests into their houses and into their lives.

In the Letter to the Hebrews we read: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Hospitality has been a virtue of great importance throughout salvation history. Abraham and Sarah were hospitable to their three guests in today’s first reading. Because of that, the couple was blessed with a son. In the Gospel, we see that Martha was hospitable to Our Lord in material things, while Mary was hospitable on a spiritual level.

When we welcome others, we show respect for Our Lord in a fundamental way. We are welcoming God’s greatest creation – human beings who are made in God’s image and likeness. This is especially true when married couples welcome new children into the world and form them for society, for the Church. A little while ago, I visited a mother in the hospital who had just delivered her fourth child. She and her husband were thrilled. But she told me that during her pregnancy, several people had said to her: “You’re crazy to have another baby! You belong on the pill!!

Children are the supreme gift of marriage. What wonderful blessings they are! And yet parents know what a real sacrifice and challenging work it is to raise children the right way. Husbands and wives should decide with God, in a spirit of responsibility and generosity, how many children, hopefully, to welcome. The method of birth regulation is among the most important decisions spouses make. The world, of course, promotes contraception, sterilization and even abortion as the only sane and reliable methods to regulate births.

By being open to life, husbands and wives show their respect for the Lord and His plan for marriage and family. Unlike the evil of contraception, the very reliable, safe and moral methods of Natural Family Planning are entirely open to life. Never does the couple using Natural Family Planning close their sexual acts to the Lord and Giver of life. God remains God. And as we see from our Scripture readings today, when we stay faithful to Our Lord, He fulfills our needs and satisfies our desires. Far from being just another technique of avoiding children like the old rhythm method, Natural Family Planning fosters those virtues that bring spouses into the right relationship with Our Lord and with one another. This is certainly to be promoted – TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH!

Married couples and, in fact, all of us should imitate Abraham, Martha and Mary – receptive to God who comes to us in one another. May we be hospitable, welcoming others and even an occasional angel.

I admit, it took me a while to figure out that artificial contraception was just NOT for me at all. Even after having my daughter, I went right back to the pill….but I was miserable….when I discussed it with my doc, she would switch me back and forth between different brands….I even tried the ring for a while….with the last round of pills I would get violently hungry at the same time every morning and I don’t mean like “Dude, I’m starving!!” kind of hungry…no, it was more like “Dude, if I don’t eat something right fucking now I’m going to pass out or throw up or both – either way it won’t be pretty!!” kind of hungry. When I called my docs office to let them know I wasn’t happy with that particular pill either, before I explained the problem they asked if it was severe nausea or or the intense hunger……really? You knew that people were complaining about that and you still gave it to me?

That was really it. I’d let them start me on the pill to “regulate things” when I was 18. I wasn’t sexually active and spoke to my priest about it……after Bill and I got together, I eventually let myself get comfortable with the convenient side effects. I dealt with just about every possible side effect for way too long…..after the crazy-hunger-pill episode my doc said she would call in something else for me but I told her to forget it, I was going to do things the right way now. It took 3 months for the have-to-eat-like-NOW to ease up and a year for it to stop completely.

Since I’m always being asked “You mean you’re not on the pill?”, let me ask you…..why are you? My top three favorite responses:

….because I can have sex whenever I want!

Okay….and how often is that? Because to be perfectly honest I had the sex drive of a paper weight no matter what kind of hormonal contraceptive I was using. Now that I’ve got all that crap well out of my system, I have the normal sex drive of a 33-year-old woman, many more days than you probably think to do something with it and a LOT less anxiety……over that aspect of my life, anyway!!

….because I get bad cramps and/or long periods

Yeah…been there….worst cramps I ever had were while I was taking Ortho Tri-cyclen. Longest periods, when I was using the ring. Do you really think your 35 day cycle wants to be crammed into the 28 days that the pharmaceutical companies think it should be? Honestly?

….because I can skip my period if I want to

This is the one that disturbs me the most….that is seriously not even a little bit good for your body. It’s time for your uterus to shed it’s lining and you want to keep it around for another week/month/quarter to better suit your schedule? I’m not even going to get into all the problems that can cause but wow….you might want to think about that one a bit more.

Look, I’m not judging anyone but by the same token, don’t judge me. I’ve learned my lesson…..and yes, I’ve even confessed my sin….and was lucky enough to have a priest – a friend! – that would patiently answer all of my questions and kindly smile when I shook my head at my own foolishness 🙂

It’s not too late – it’s never too late!! Learn more about Natural Family Planning here. Then talk to someone who has the answers….and accept the fact that you might be looking for a new GYN. Then, if you or someone you know think NFP might be the way to go, there is a study currently underway on the effectiveness of two different methods of Natural Family Planning: click here for more info – I’m doing it 😉

I had wanted to start off July 1st with a bang and get back to posting every day like I did in November and December of last year…..obviously, it didn’t happen. Not a huge deal, I just wanted to get the writing going to get myself ready for the Blogathon. But yeah, didn’t happen.

Not that I had anything in particular that I wanted to write about or anything….first full week of work after 5 days off, I was actually kind of numb by the time the first rolled around….and right now I’m just happy with this three day weekend and looking forward to the days I have off next week….I was thinking of even adding a few days on there but then this morning it occurred to me that I might try to get an extra day around Blogathon weekend….have to check the schedule when I get in on Tuesday.

Anyway, I’ve started making little notes for myself here and there about things that I want to write about during the Blogathon but I could always use some ideas might even put together a 20 questions or start working on a ‘101 things about me’ kind of thing so if you have any questions you’d like to see me answer during the ‘thon drop me a line 😉